Google urges content owners to monetise on YouTube

Google is urging content copyright holders to use its Video ID technology to monetise their videos that appear on YouTube. So far copyright holders who have used the technology have managed to monetise 90pc of all claims.

The system helps content owners decide exactly what they want done with their videos, whether to block, promote or even – if a copyright owner choses to license their content to appear on the site – monetise them.

Writing in the official Google blog, YouTube product manager David King said he was curious to see if copyright holders would choose to block user-uploaded videos or embrace Video ID as a way of generating revenue and exposing their content online.

“As it turns out, our partners are choosing the latter,” King says, “monetising 90pc of all claims created through Video ID.

“This has led directly to a similarly significant increase in monetizable partner inventory, as our Video ID partners are seeing claimed content more than double their number of views, against which we can run ads.

“This means that if a partner has, say, 10,000 views of its content, leaving up videos claimed by our system will lead to an average additional 10,000 views of that same content. We call this "partner uplift," and for some partners we’ve seen uplift as high as 9000pc,” King said.

Access to Video ID is open to all rights owners. So far over 300 Video ID partners are using the technology.

“These partners now have a new way to successfully distribute and market their content online, and with the help of our users, they are finding Video ID critical to discovering such opportunities,” King said.

Despite the major legal battle that saw Viacom win the right to have YouTube hand over user logs earlier this year, copyright holders who in the past would have had similar combative relationships with YouTube have since turned to using the Video ID system to their advantage.

In recent months companies like CBS, Electronic Arts and Lionsgate that previously would have been telling YouTube to remove unauthorised clips, are now starting to sell advertising around movies, music videos and other content.